Profitable Brilliance is written by Bruce Rogers and Russ Prince on the topic of how to make your company a thought leader. Bruce is the Chief Insights Officer for Forbes Media and Russ Prince is the President of Prince Associates. They are the co-authors of the book "Profitable Brillance: How Professional Services Firms Become Thought Leaders" available on Amazon http://amzn.to/PnkUnB

He or She Who 'Owns' the Client Wins

The Queen of Pentacles has a very successful business. She provides advice across a wide range of issues for various upscale clients. In one case she was an advisor on a multi-billion Euro cross-border acquisition. For another client she helped decide if he should get divorced and run off with his children’s nanny. The Queen regularly provides advice on what lovers her clients should select (from a preset list compiled by said clients) and, most importantly, how much to “spoil” them. Her most common request is to evaluate future potential business deals and career moves.

The Queen of Pentacles is not your everyday professional advisor. No matter what the topic, she is available for the right price, to provide insights and direction. According to her clients, she has the gift. Her gift is her ability to see shades of the future and make discerning recommendations. She works her magic with the aid of the Tarot.

The Tarot originated in northern Italy during the early Italian Renaissance – probably somewhere between 1420 and 1440. The Tarot is a set of seventy-eight cards, composed of twenty-two cards referred to as the Major Arcana. There is also the Minor Arcana consisting of fifty-six cards divided evenly into four suits – Wands, Pentacles, Cups and Swords. The way the cards are placed for a reading is called a spread. One of the Queen’s preferred spread is The Celtic Cross. However, she is very fond of various spreads including the Star of David, Steps of Knowledge and Orgasmic Destiny.

Now for the complication… The Queen is concerned that, increasingly, some of the better prospects and even some of her better clients are turning to her competitors. In particular, there’s a psychometrician and aithromancier that, she grudgingly admits concerns her. What really galling her is that her competitors – including the lithromancier– are not nearly as psychically gifted as she is. What’s even more infuriating is that she proclaims the psychometrician is a con artist who’s pretty good at cold reading.

What proves so interesting is that a conversation with the Queen of Pentacles about business development closely mirrors our conversations with a great many professionals such as attorneys, accountants, physicians and investment advisors. There’s a pervasive and strong point of view among all these individuals that talent wins out or, more precisely, should win out. They generally believethat the most capable and adept professionals or firms – the ones with the highest quality services or products – are the ones that will or at least should garner the lion’s share of the business. Sometimes this indeed is the case, but not always.

In any business dependent on new clients or maintaining and expanding relationships with existing clients or both, the individual or firm that gets those relationships and holds onto them is the winner. They certainly might not be the best or even in the top 10%, they can even be in the bottom 10%. Nevertheless, they’re still the ones that are generally the most financially successful – the winners. Moreover, the extent to which clients have difficulty evaluating “true quality” as is the case with many professional services, the sourcing and relationship management capabilities of the firm regularly trumps superior expertise.

While not to denigrate the tremendous importance of doing a sensational, high-quality job for clients or providing exceptional products, being the recognized authority can often be the most critical component to the financial success of the business. This goes for the Queen of Pentacles as well.

Very often, the most powerful way to become that authority in your field is to become a thought leader. This positioning will likely enable you to dramatically increase your ability to source preferred, highly profitable clients for your services or products. It can also be instrumental in garnering the loyalty of existing top-notch clients and expanding your relationship with them. It’s certainly one of the very best ways to “own” the client.

It’s very possible to assist the Queen of Pentacles to become a celebrity in her field. The methodology to make her a thought leader for the services she provides is actually no different than doing the same for a management consultant or a banker or any type of professional. So, for you: “Is becoming a thought leader in the cards?”

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